Thomas Train

The ‘Sage of Omaha’ Warren Buffet has just bought one of America’s largest freight railway firms, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) for $26bn in an “all-in wager” of America’s economic future.

He could have gotten a big chunk of a UK bank for that price, but Mr Buffet thinks that ‘railroads will get a decent return’ and will underpin a low-carbon economy in the future. With efficiency much higher than any other transport mode for goods, railroads will probably become a hot-potato for politicians as well (for some it already is).

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Are we witnessing an EU awakening to the role ICT plays in creating a flourishing and sustainable European society? Looking at the recently published proposal for ‘A Green Knowledge Society: An ICT policy agenda to 2015 for Europe’s future knowledge society’ by the Swedish EU presidency one would think so. More so, the European Commission has also recently adopted the recommendation of mobilising ICT to facilitate the transition to an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy. It looks good on paper if nothing else.

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The relationship between privacy issues and smart metering was always going to be fraught with concern. As such, I was interested to read this article which includes a summary of some of the key issues being faced in Canada and Netherlands. Firstly, to Canada, where law-enforcers have monitored energy usage as part of gathering evidence against suspected marijuana growers. Clever, eh? However, in court, the judge dismissed the ammeter as a source of evidence for reasons of invasion of privacy; it transpired that the police hadn’t obtained the necessary search warrant to use it. Not such a smart move after all.
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Although this time of the year is known as the silly season there is clearly some smart thinking going on.

I came across this article published yesterday about ‘Smart Grid 2.0: ‘The Soft Grid’. The ‘Soft Grid’ referred to here is an emerging market segment described as the ‘countless new applications needed to improve the generation, distribution, consumption and monitoring of the Grid’. (Contrast the ’smart grid’, which, generally speaking, refers to infrastructure hardware.) The potential of this ‘intelligent software’ is noted and comparison to Apple’s approach to the third-party development of applications for its products is made.
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Yesterday, the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s consultation on smart metering for electricity and gas closed. As consumer groups and energy companies took to the airwaves, I expect the printers at 3 Whitehall Place were working overtime as a no-doubt plethora of responses from a range of interested parties were being churned out to make a long summer reading list for the officials involved.

Amongst others, the Energy Networks Association, and the Energy Retail Association have submitted responses urging the Government to make decisions quickly. This is a view that I agree with. Talking to Intellect’s members, there is no doubt there is genuine enthusiasm and excitement with regard to the roll-out of smart meters. As such, the Government’s response to this consultation will be eagerly awaited.

So what did Intellect’s response say?
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An interesting posting appeared on Google’s public policy blog yesterday which once again set out not only their support for smart meters but what they are doing to better leverage their use. One key part of this is the Google PowerMeter. In brief, it will enable users to access information about their own energy use on their iGoogle home page. This reminds me of an earlier posting which highlighted that it is possible to receive updates about your home’s energy use via Twitter.
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So the government’s big low carbon transition plan was launched today mapping out how we’ll achieve emissions cuts of 34% by 2020. It’s a beast of a document at over 200 pages but any strategy that promises the creation of 1.2 Million “green jobs” isn’t going to be able to tell you how on a couple of sides of A4. Overall it seems to do a good job of pulling together previously disparate policies in to a coherent transition plan and we welcome that. I’ve included a summary list of all the big ideas below and we’re particularly pleased to see the reinforced commitment to smart metering and smart grids. However, ICT and associated technologies are critical enablers of this transition and don’t seem to get much of a mention elsewhere. Maybe that’s fair enough when the document points out that half of the proposed carbon cuts by 2020 would come from changes to the power sector. But the 15% that will come from making homes more efficient, 10% from workplace improvements, and 20% from changing how we travel (the other 5% from agriculture and land use) will also benefit from ICT applications. The problem here is the lack of a market for these already-available technologies and we must be smarter at addressing how we tackle this.

Summary points:

• Plans are projected to create 1.2m “green jobs”
• Every government department will be required to meet a carbon budget alongside its financial budget.
• Domestic energy prices would rise in 2020 to pay for some of the required changes. Hopes are this would be offset with energy efficiency savings in 7m homes and financial help for the poorest consumers.
• launches consultation on the details of the government’s feed-in tariff, re-named the “clean energy cash-back” scheme, which will pay people and businesses a premium for generating low-carbon electricity. A similar scheme for renewable heat will follow in April 2011.
• Introduces plans for a “pay as you save” scheme for homeowners to receive loans to insulate their homes, with money repaid by savings in energy costs.
• Up to £6m to start development of a “smart grid”, including a policy road map next year.
• Launch of the new Office for Renewable Energy Deployment in the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to speed up the growth of renewables in the UK.
• DECC to take direct responsibility from Ofgem for establishing a new grid access regime within 12 months.
• Up to £180m would be made available to promote wind and tidal power – this includes setting up a low-carbon economic area in the south-west to promote marine technologies and money for up to 3,000 wind turbines off the UK’s shores by 2020.
• £15m to establish a Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre that will develop the next generation of nuclear power infrastructure.
• £10 million will go to improving infrastructure for charging electric vehicles.
• Challenging 15 villages, towns or cities to be test-beds for piloting future green initiatives.

Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change announced last Friday the UK’s ‘Road to Copenhagen.’ With a strategy that is ambitious, effective, and fair the Government believes that we can make great headway coming into the Climate Change Sumit and achieve a robust (i.e. staying below a 2°C rise in global temp) climate agreement that all (relevant) countries agree to. Well, no counter arguing from me on that point.
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I just came across this story about the rollout of smart meters in New Zealand. However, my use of the word ‘smart’ is perhaps misleading, given that some energy companies over there are being lambasted for installing ‘dumb meters’.

In the words of one consumer, talking about his new meter, ‘it has not made any difference to my life whatsoever, except I think my power bill is a little bit higher than it used to me’. He goes on, noting that it is ‘smartly taking more of [his] cash’.

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I’ve always wondered why we’ve not been back to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. A mixture of astronomical costs – in every sense of the word - and ebbing of the Cold War no doubt played a large part in dulling this ambition. The result today is a generation of people for whom space means little more than a decaying space station, a powerful telescope and Battlestar Galactica (if their inner geek will admit it). But the reality is that there’s a lot more going on high above our heads than just floating unshaved cosmonauts and buzz-cutted yanks, and today’s launch of the new Space Innovation and Growth Team (IGT) aims to get the UK excited about space again. (more…)